


Out of the Dark

by Chioces



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bottom Harry, Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, Emotional Baggage, Feels, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Praise Kink, Size Difference, Size Kink, Slow Burn, Top Draco Malfoy, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:48:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29814189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chioces/pseuds/Chioces
Summary: Draco's life is simple and respectable, and for Draco, it's more that enough. That is, until one night he makes the ill-advised decision to help a very drunk Harry Potter.Now Potter is trying to weasel his way into his life, and Draco knows, for his sanity's sake, that he needs to keep him out of it. Only for his sanity, of course. Draco's heart has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 28
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

All the shops are closed on Diagon Alley. Thick rain gives the usually well-lit, cheery little street a dark, foreboding air. Not that there’s much darkness or foreboding left in the world, thinks Draco as he strides through the downpour. His steps are neither quick nor slow, he walks as he would walk on any sunny day. Back straight, head high. Proud.

 _Malfoys are always proud,_ his father would say when Draco slouched in the disappointment of another canceled father-son outing, _whatever the world throws at them. Remember, revolutions are fought over dignity. You can bare poverty, you can scrub floors on hands and knees, so long as your dignity remains intact._ And Draco does maintain his dignity, keeps his wit, and smiles under wraps as tightly as he keeps in the sadness, fears, the disappointments.

People work with him, happy to do business with Malfoy Enterprises. Draco is quick and sharp, always exact, always on time. But they do not socialize with him.

When he was younger he blamed it on the war. On an irreparably stained reputation. But people are surprisingly willing to forgive and to forget. No, Draco’s partners don’t socialize with him, because it turns out that people need to enjoy one’s company in order to spend any time in it, and few can stand Draco’s cool, courteous demeanor for more that half an hour at a time. Just long enough to do business: agree on shipping schedules, handling costs, port and boarder fees; then they’re out, off to the pub with their buddies, or dinners, or home to their wives and children.

Draco, on the other hand, stays behind in his office of beautifully carved American mahogany, and works, and works, and works some more, until his eyes can barely stay open. Then he rises from his desk, dons his cloak and walks to the apparition station, where his existence ceases, just for a moment, then re-materializes, with a pop, picture perfect outside the gates of the Malfoy Manor. From there he walks the two hundred and twenty seven steps to the front doors, up the stairs to the second story, and down the corridor to his bedroom.

He still sleeps in the bedroom he grew up in, despite of the fact that his parents have permanently moved to the Chateau in France. Still, he’s loth to relocate into their chambers, the rooms seeming somehow sacred. Even now. Even after everything. A place of laughter and fairy tales. When he was little, he’d crawl into their bed, snuggling between his parents on cold mornings, and they’d stay that way, together, laughing talking in hushed tones, as though there was no world outside their door, no danger or evil, just warmth and safety and comfort. _Family._

Draco’s bedroom and the kitchens are the only rooms he keeps warm these days, the rest of the house preserved from decay under a series of stasis charms. He likes it this way. It feels less wasteful, though what it is he’s trying to conserve, he hardly knows. He’d ask someone who knows him, but there’s no one to ask. Perhaps it’s magic. He lives with the endless feeling of his magic seeping from him through his Dark Mark, though the mark is long since dead, a relic, like the Manor, the bedroom, like Draco himself. Something that survived the war, even though it shouldn’t have.

It was long past midnight when Draco finished his work for the day. By the time he’d left his office it had been raining for hours, and now he’s out in it, though he doesn’t much care. He’s wrapped himself in an umbrella charm and is as happy with the rain as without it.

He’s nearly at the apparition point when he’s accosted. Draco starts, but doesn’t reach for his wand. Any threatening gesture can be perceived as an attack, and though it’s been years since the DMLE has taken any interest in him, he’s hardly willing to test them.

So he pushes the figure from himself, murmurs, “my apologies,” and tries to step around it.

“Apologies?” says the man, for it is a man, even though he’s tiny, barely reaching Draco’s shoulder. The man sways a moment, hair wet and plastered on is face, obscuring it, and promptly falls into Draco’s arms again.

Sighing Draco drags the figure to a bench, fully prepared to wrap him in an umbrella charm and leave him there, when the man presses his nose into Draco’s collar and inhales.

Draco freezes.

“You smell so…” mumbles the man, and Draco shakes his head, sitting the man down on the bench, “you smell so good.”

Draco lets out a surprised laugh. He doesn’t remember when he’d last let a man, any man, this close to his skin. Draco pushes the man’s wet hair off his brow and blinks at the vivid red lighting bolt scar that had been hiding beneath it.

“Potter?”

“No. No, no. Potter doesn’t exist. He’s dead. I killed him. Ex-e-cuted.”

“Potter you idiot. What are you doing out here? And drunk. Oh my god.”

“Not Potter. Not drunk. Dead.” Potter opens one eye and peers at him. “Malfoy? Ha.” He laughs. “You’re dead too! Look at us, two dead men breathing.”

“Morbid. Come now. Where do you live. I’ll take you home.”

“Home? There’s no such thing, haven’t you heard?”

A couple walks past them, peering at them curiously. 

“Potter. Give me your fucking address. I have no wish to be seen here with you. I’ll be blamed for the mess you are, and then I’ll be the one dealing with the fallout, not you. Where. Do. You. Live.”

“I don’t live. I’m dead.”

And then Potter very conveniently passes out. Draco goes to his knees in front of him and presses his forehead to Potter’s knee, abruptly exhausted. He stays that way for a breath. Two. The rain beating down on his umbrella charm, he moves his fringe out of his eyes, then swearing, casts a featherlight, gets to his feet, and lifts Potter into his arms.

He carries the man to the apparition point, apparates to Malfoy Manor, walks two hundred and twenty seven steps to the front door, and carries Potter up the stairs. In the corridor he hesitates for a moment, looking at all the doors leading to the guest rooms, then deciding on the one beside his, shoulders his way inside before depositing a still unconscious Potter onto the bed. He removes most of Potter’s soaked clothes with the flick of his wand and tucks him into the bed. He lays the clothes out on an armchair, drying them as they arrange themselves; lights the fire; then sits down on the floor to connect this room to the heating charm on his own. By the time he’s done, Draco is shaking, he hasn’t done this much magic at once in over a decade. The Dark Mark feels like a living, writhing thing under his skin. He needs to lift the sleeve of his robe in order to remind himself that it’s not. That it’s dead. That it’s long since dead.

Getting to his feet, Draco leaves the room. He hesitates for a moment beside the door, and turns to look at Potter. He does seem dead, lying there, so small in the overly large bed. Then Potter scrunches up his nose, frowning in his sleep, and Draco is flooded with the life of him, here, in this tomb of a house. Harry is the first living creature to enter it since Draco sent the last of his elves packing, all the way to France, to serve his parents, as they should. Sighing, Draco closes the door behind himself and goes into his own room.

He strips, letting his clothes fall where they will, and drops into his bed.

Draco is asleep before he even manages to close his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Draco wakes from the creek of a floorboard outside his door. His hand reflexively clutches at his wand, hidden beneath his pillow before he remembers the previous night, and Potter sleeping in the room next to his.

He sighs, feeling oddly exposed, even though he’s under a pile of blankets. He tries not to imagine what Potter must think, having woken up in an old dusty Manor, alone, and probably with no recollection of where he was or how he got there. Draco knows that he should get up, tell Potter that he is safe, offer him some coffee and a side-along. It’s unlikely that the man is steady enough on his feet to be trusted with apparition yet.

Draco closes his eyes. Potter will be fine on his own for a few more minutes. There’s nothing dangerous left in the Manor, apart from the icy drafts, and Draco is just not ready to face him, to be cool, and rational and polite.

Whatever there is to be said for Potter, he’s always managed to make Draco lose control so fast you’d think he never had any to begin with. He hated it, knew how it looked, knew how he looked to Potter: wild and out of control. Endlessly erratic, even though he wasn’t. Even though he’d been, even then, even as a little boy trying to carve a place for himself in the world, calm, and methodical, and terribly controlled. Always. Except for the moments when faced with him.

The one time he’d truly lost his composure without Potter’s involvement was that day in the girl’s toilet. Draco absently curls his palm over the largest scar left behind by Potter’s sectumsempra. And oh, how he payed for it-those tears, that loss of control-with a grotesque webbing of scars across his face and chest, tight and still itchy on days that are particularly damp, or dry, or remotely uncomfortable.

Draco hears the doorknob turn, the shushing of the door sliding open against the rug. He keeps his eyes closed, collecting his thoughts. This is absolutely fine. No more than a slight inconvenience. Bringing Potter here had been the decent thing to do, there’s no way he can be angry at Draco for it. Had the situation been reversed, he’d have been grateful for the protection of his dignity. Potter must be too. He must be.

Unable to bear the tension any longer, Draco opens his eyes.

Potter is standing in there, small and awkward, dwarfed by the towering bedroom door. Hands twisted together, wand nowhere in sight. He’s barefoot, and it’s oddly intimate.

Draco feels a pang, somewhere in his solar plexus. He wonders what it would be like if it were someone else standing there, someone who loved him, someone who was hoping for an invitation into his bed. Draco blinks the thought away. Hope is useless to him, as is love.

“Malfoy,” Potter breathes, and he sound relieved. That, and exhausted. He shuts the door behind himself and sinks down the wall to sit on the floor, knees coming up to let his chin rest on them, staring at Draco, as though he’s… something. “Don’t suppose you have a pepper-up potion somewhere in this place?”

Draco licks his lips, “no.” He breaths, then, “I don’t think so.”

“Water then?”

Draco nods, sitting up in his bed. The covers fall from him, exposing his chest.

Potter’s eyes immediately go to the scars and he pales, closes his eyes as though the sight sickens him. Draco wonder how Harry’d react if he were to see his face without the glamour, the long scar crawling from brow to jaw. _It’s beautiful,_ his mother had said. _The mark of a man._

Draco takes his wand out from under the pillow and summons two glasses of water, they pop onto his bedside table, and Draco climbs out of his bed, carries one of them to Potter by hand, the though of doing any unnecessary magic making his stomach churn.

Potter watches him, curious but not wary.

“Aren’t you afraid,” asks Draco, “alone, in a Death Eater’s house?”

“Should I be?”

Draco shrugs noncommittally as Potter takes the offered glass. Potter takes it, hands shaking, and drinks it down. Draco is about to offer him the second glass when Potter flicks his wrist and his glass refills with water. He dinks that one down too. And half of a third before he stops.

Draco goes back to his bed, sits on the edge of it, resists the urge to cover his dark mark with his palm. He’s not ashamed of where he’s been. He made his choices, and he stands by them, however regrettable.

“No,” says Potter, “I don’t think you’re much of a danger to anyone.”

The words sting, but Draco doesn’t rise to the bait, instead he nods. “There’s a shower through the door on the other side of your room. You may use it. I apologize, I don’t have any spare toothbrushes in the house. I’ll be ready to leave for work in fifteen minutes. You can side-along.”

Potter closes his eyes, leans his head back against the wall, exposing the long arch of his throat. Draco stares at it for a moment, wonders when the last time was that someone, anyone, was this relaxed with him. Maybe Pansy, before Draco had taken the mark and proved in one move that he was very much bite, and not only bark.

“Or I can take you home. I would have last night, but you wouldn’t tell me where you lived.”

“I don’t live anywhere.”

Exasperated Draco nearly snaps, _what the fuck does that even mean?_ But he has more control than that, these days.

“Alternatively you may remain here, apparate back when you’ve recovered some. Don’t try to apparate form inside the manor, it will splinch you. There’s some bread and jam in the kitchens, tea. You may help yourself. Do wear your cloak while moving about though, I don’t heat the rest of the house.”

“Why?”

“What for?”

“Isn’t this your home?”

“It’s my… Potter. Accept the curtesy when it’s offered.”

Potter flinches away, and Draco, damn him, feels as bad for snapping at him as he would for snapping at a puppy.

He wants to ask, he wants to pry. He hasn’t read the Daily Prophet in years, Draco knows _nothing_ of Potter’s life, _nothing_. And he terribly, desperately wants to know. But Potter seems exhausted, and did Draco not just tell Potter off for exactly that? For prying?

No. He’s better off keeping this encounter as pleasant and unintrusive as possible, and come tomorrow they’ll both forget about this, and move on with their lives.

“Alright,” says Draco, running a hand through the short hair on the back of his kneck, “go on then. I need to get ready for work.”

“Do you ever wish you were someone else? Some no name first year, that went unnoticed most of Hogwarts, and graduated, and found a job, maybe in Flourish and Blotts, not a good job, or a bad one, just a job, and floated through life, worried about outfits, dates.”

“Potter,” says Draco.

“Or maybe a muggle. A nameless, faceless muggle.”

“No Potter, I don’t.”

“Unwilling to give it up? All this?” There’s a sneer to his voice, the desolate feel of Malfoy Manor has clearly not gone unnoticed.

“No Potter. There’s nothing to give up. Nothing to undo or redo. It is what it is, this is our life, and we’d best get on with it. I have no time nor inclination to wallow.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because it won’t help. It will hurt the heart, and cripple the spirit, but it most certainly will not help. This is what we have—you: your adoring crowd, a crown, a name. And I: this castle, a stellar reputation, a job that is challenging enough to be enjoyable. It is enough. It has to be.”

And how did this conversation suddenly turn to the baring of souls? There’s no one else, he supposes, no one else in his life who knows. Who’s been there. Who walked through the same hell, even if it was in the opposite direction.

“Doesn’t it haunt you? Being here, with all the memories? With him?”

“Voldemort is long dead Potter, and if I want to rid myself of the memories, I’d have to chop off my arm and obliviate myself, and even then, I don’t know if it would be enough. So no, short of suicide, I’m stuck with it, the war. My part in it. I may as well live here, what does it matter where I take the memories, what spaces I let them inhabit?”

They fall silent then, each in their own thoughts. Until, with a start, Draco remembers the time and rises from his bed.

“Enough. I need to get dressed. My first meeting is in half an hour.”

*

Potter leaves the room, and Draco dresses.

By the time his first meeting starts he’s forgotten Potter was ever even there.


	3. Chapter 3

Draco’s day goes without a hitch. His client’s shipments arrive on time, are picked up or delivered by courier. He manages to secure a slightly larger contract than normal with the Magical Menagerie.

All in all, he’s rather pleased with himself by the time he saunters up the Manor path, looking forward to a glass of wine and a long bath.

The first sign that something’s amiss comes when he opens the manor door and is hit with a blast of warm air. Draco frowns, steps inside, looks around. The hallway is warm. He scowls.

_Potter._

His hand is on his wand quicker than he can think, and he’s halfway through dismantling the heating charm when he realizes that it’s probably a gesture of gratitude. A _thank you_.

It’s fine. Draco can accept gratitude with grace. He’s an adult now, he doesn’t need to throw unwanted gifts back in the face of the giver. And in any case, without Potter himself here to sustain it, the damn thing will wisp away to nothing in a day or two.

He has to admit that it’s almost nice, being able to unclasp his cloak as he makes his way to the kitchens for his much deserved wine.

Draco freezes outside the kitchen. A warm strip of light comes from under the door, and music drifts softly through the door. Something old, and romantic—Draco shivers—the kind of music his parents used to dance to, once, when they’d still been terribly in love. Draco would sneak out of bed to watch. Even among all the spender of his childhood, he’d never seen anything more spectacular than the two of them, waltzing across the living room carpet: his father in his pajamas and house robe, his mother in a soft white night gown that floated about her as though held by magic. They would laugh, and kiss, and his father would tell his mother that he’d thought of nothing all day but her.

Draco pushes open the kitchen door, half expecting to see the two of them, but no, it’s just the wireless turned to an ‘oldies but goodies’ station. The kitchen is empty. There’s a single candle on the counter top, bathing the room in a shimmering gold light. It illuminates a silver platter with a stack of crepes on it, still hot and steaming under a glass dome charmed to retain heat. Beside the platter, in a neat little row stand three jars: honey, jam and an odd looking one with a white cap, marked Nutella in happy red letters.

Draco looks about for a note, but finds none. He stares at the crepes in wonder for a moment. Then, terribly curious, he lifts the glass dome.

The smell of warm butter floods the kitchen, and Draco has to close his eyes against it. Overwhelmed. It’s almost too much. Almost.

Draco removes his cloak. He takes a glass out of the cupboard, grabs a bottle of red off the wine rack in the corner of the room, and slowly opens the bottle by hand, looking at the crepes, as though unable to believe they’re there. His mother made them for breakfast sometimes, as a special treat, when they summered in France. Served them up with whipped cream and berries.

Draco places the glass of wine on the small table he’s dragged into the kitchen a few years back, having gotten weary of eating the few meals he had in the manor standing. He carries over the crepes and falls into the chair, before finally, finally, removing the glass dome once more and lifting a hot crepe from the pile, with thumb and forefinger. He tears off a piece and tastes it, closing his eyes. There’s something private, decadent about it—eating the crepes—warm and familiar, and prepared with only him in mind.

Draco doesn’t read into it, knows that Potter meant nothing by it but ‘ _thank you for not leaving me out in the rain_.’ And still, the care of it floods him with a warmth he’d long forgotten. This must be what it feels like, to be adored, thinks a small, sentimental part of him. He imagines Potter, here, barefoot in his kitchen, humming along to the wireless as he prepares crepes for _Draco_. He’d push the image down, but he’s too entranced, too _touched_ by the gesture, meaningless though it is.

Before he knows it, Draco has devoured the entire stack of crepes, just as they are, plain, forgetting about the honey, and jam, and odd little jar marked Nutella.

Grief curls, tight and familiar in Draco’s sternum. There’s something cruel in Potter’s thoughtless display, showing Draco what could exist, and doesn’t, hasn’t. Never will. All the things he thought came guaranteed with life—joy, love, family—have proved to be the hardest to secure. Hard to find someone to love when it turns out they must love you in return. With a sigh, Draco rises from the table. He washes the plate and glass dome, placing them into their respective drawers.

Leaving his cloak forgotten on the chair, Draco picks up the wine bottle and glass, and walks out of the kitchen. Behind him the wireless goes quiet, the candle flickers and dies, and the kitchen returns to its usual cold and desolate state.

*

Draco is making his way down the corridor to his bedroom when there’s a sudden creak. He drops the wine bottle and draws his wand, hear pounding and ears ringing with the abrupt burst of adrenalin.

Potter steps into the hallway from the guest bedroom Draco had put him in the previous night.

“Oh,” Potter says, scratching sleepily at his stomach, “you’re home.” He’s barefoot again, drowning in a shirt that is far too large on him. Draco blinks at him, stupid with surprise, and finally lowers her wand from where it’s pointed between Potter’s furrowed brows.

“Home? Potter! What the fuck are you still doing here?”

Potter blinks at him, confused, “oh,” he says, face falling, “you didn’t like the pancakes.”

“Crepes,” Draco corrects without thinking.

“Right.”

Potter looks down at the floor, and Draco follows his gaze, the silk, hand woven rug is stained red with wine, there are splatters on the walls. Draco closes his eyes, trying to keep himself from exploding. He’s lived in the manor alone for over a decade, and nothing like this has ever happened. At least he didn’t drop the glass as well, or else there’d be shards to collect on top of everything.

He digs through his mind for cleaning charms that will get red wine out of white, but comes up empty. Before, things like these were the job of house elves, and now, well, it’s no one’s job, because Draco doesn’t make it a habit of spilling anything, let alone red wine.

“Aren’t you going to—” Potter asks, gesturing at the floor.

Draco grits his teeth, contemplates saying _I don’t know how_ , then thinks better of it, then says it anyway.

“I don’t know how.”

“Right.” Potter gives him an amused little smile, flicks a wrist, fingers nearly visible beneath the too long cuffs of the shirt, and—poof—the stains are gone, the bottle is standing upright on the floor, a little wine still left in it.

“Thank you.”

“For the wine or the…”

“Both,” says Draco, wanting to be over and done with this, whatever this is.

Potter beams. Charming.

Draco blinks the thought from his mind.

“Potter. You hate me. I hate you. I don’t know what you’re hiding from, but do it elsewhere.” Potter bites his lip, and Draco grounds out a, “please,” because he is nothing if not polite.

“It’s um… the middle of the night.”

Draco rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Don’t you have a job to get back to? A Weasley?”

“I don’t take up that much space,” Potter glances around, “and it’s not like you’re using it anyway.”

“That’s not the point! This is my space—”

“Empty and desolate—” Potter starts, but Draco talks right over him.

“Empty and desolate though it is,” the wine sloshes in the glass he’s still holding, _easy, easy, don’t lose control now_ , “I did my civic duty, and saved the hero, but if I were in search of roommates, I’d already have them, and even if I didn’t, I most certainly would not chose you: a sad little ghost drifting about the manor.”

“I am not a sad little ghost!”

“Aren’t you?”

Something in Draco’s words must hit home, because Potter flinches, turning his face away. He almost thinks he’s won, but it’s Potter, and only an idiot would assume that he’d ever give up so easily.

“I’m half asleep. I might splinch myself. Imagine, half of me in Diagon Alley, the other half of me here.”

Draco almost laughs, can’t believe he ever thought that Potter didn’t have a manipulative bone in his body. What a farce. “Fine. Just the night. And only because of the… you know.”

“Crepes.”

“Right.”

Potter gives him a tiny smile, inclines his head and turns to go back into the guest bedroom.

Draco’s eyes fall to the small gold stud just below the collar of Potter’s shirt.

“Potter! Is that my shirt?” But the door has already clicked closed behind him, and Draco can do nothing but stare, dumbfounded at the grooves in the red mahogany of the door.

He lifts his wineglass to his lips, and downs it in one go.


	4. Chapter 4

Draco resists the urge to slam his door behind him. He’s practically boiling over with something… anger, maybe? Frustration at the imposition? He can’t stand the idea that there’s someone in his space, right there, right on the other side of the wall. Can’t stand that it’s _Potter._

When the war ended, Draco set to work meticulously padding his life. He took to it with the same care that expecting parents take to spelling their homes safe before the arrival of a newborn. Draco had sanded down the sharp corners, muted the smells, the tastes, muffled every sound. Firmly believing that if he rid himself of all the things that evoked feelings, he would stop having them altogether.

And it worked. Worked wonders. Draco felt his cravings fall back, his wants, needs, desires slink into the same dark part of his mind he had hidden virtue and honor, friendship and hope on the day he’d taken the Mark.

It seems to burn now, shifting beneath his skin and Draco pulls back the sleeve to stare at it. _Still. Dead._ He reminds himself, clutching it with a cool palm, soothing the fantom sensation. Then he lifts the wine bottle and downs the remainder of it in a few huge gulps. He coughs, choking on the bitter tang.

He paces around his room, feeling trapped, caged by the walls, by the wall behind which _Potter_ is sleeping. Draco’s step are heavy, they reverberate across the floor, and he wonders if Potter can hear them. _When had he last made this much noise?_ And anyway. He isn’t making it. Potter was making him make it. It was all Potter’s fault. It was always Po—

_No._ Thinks Draco, stopping mid-step. _No more of this._ This isn’t Draco. This response is not his. It was, perhaps, once, when he’d been a child. Small, and fierce and impulsive wherever Potter was concerned. And of course it was, he was a child then; but he is not a child now. He choses his responses.

However this invasion may feel to Draco, it can hardly have anything to do with himself. Potter clearly hadn’t plotted to end up in the Manor, even if he did decide to use the circumstance to his advantage once he’d woken up here. This is not about Draco, it is about Potter. Potter is going through something, and he’s using Draco, probably not even out of malice. Potter clearly needs to lay low, so low he is laying, and this is as good a place as any. Better than most, in fact. Not a soul for miles in every direction. And what is he hiding? The drunken night? The hangover? Wouldn’t do for the hero of the Wizarding World to be seen stumbling around Diagon Alley, hungover, and stinking of liquor, now would it?

Why was he drunk anyway? What had happened to set him off on such a—

Draco briefly considers sending for the Daily Prophet, gets as far as pulling out his wand, then his stomach twists and he drops the thing to the floor. He lets it lay there.

None of this is his business. Potter is none of his business, he thinks as he stalks to his bathroom. Here and gone—the moment Draco and his Manor stop being of use.

Draco undoes the small black buttons of his white shirt.

He’s better off in his ignorance, has long since quashed the unbearable urge to meddle in affairs outside of his immediate concern.

Draco drops the glamor. Looks at his reflection in the mirror. Wonders what he’d looked like had he only learned this most precious skill earlier. Had he fled London, instead of willingly taking the Mark. Not that the Slytherins who had chosen to remain on the sidelines survived very long once the war was lost. Hunted down in the Cleanup, right along with the guilty.

Still, he’d probably have looked like his father by now: long hair, arrogant smile. He keeps his hair short these days. More practical this way. No need to waste time in the upkeep. Draco thinks he looks like a shredded painting: the remanence of Malfoy beauty, hidden beneath hideous scars. Draco touches the red line running down his cheek, the other, smaller one across the bridge of his nose.

Maybe he should bring Potter breakfast in bed tomorrow with these exposed. Surely that will drive him out of the Manor: such a blatant reminder of his handiwork. His _darkness._ Potter will hardly be able to handle that. Too good, too _light,_ to face this side of his own nature. _What must it feel like,_ Draco wonders, _to be endlessly good?_

Blood comes unbidden to the surface of his mind. A pool of it, red, soaking the white rug in the corridor. And the body upon it, crawling on hands and knees towards Draco, begging him to end its miserable life.

Draco’s stomach heaves.

He turns from the mirror, glamor snapping firmly back in place, and stamps the memory down.

He turns on the bath with a shaking hand, looks at the steam for a moment. Then he’s on his feet, opening a cabinet drawer. Inside, in neat little rows, stand dozens of round black vials, barely the size of a fist, each with a small tag tied to its neck, with _Dreamless Sleep,_ written on it in Draco’s elegant hand _._

Draco reaches for one of the vials, takes it out. Then gritting his teeth, puts it back into the cabinet, shutting it with a click.

The bath will be enough to help him relax. It absolutely will be.

*

Draco’s dreams are red, a roiling ocean of death, clawing at the black of a starless sky, as its waves break on blade-like cliffs. And Draco, alone in it, gasping for breath, kicking wildly. He struggles to keep his head above water, even as his clothes and Dark Mark try to drag him down, down.

Until finally, mercifully—with a vivid flash of green, and the hissing whisper of _Avada Kedavra—_ respite comes.

*

Draco wakes with a start.

Someone’s there. _They’ve come to kill me,_ Draco reaches for his wand, but it’s not under his pillow. The floor! _I left it—_

“Malfoy.”

The lights come on. He’s blinded. They’re going to torture him first. _They know. They’re going to—_

“Malfoy.”

He can take death, but torture. He’s seen first hand what—

“Malfoy! For fucks sakes!”

Draco blinks. His eyes clear. Potter is standing over his bed, face white, eyes wide.

“Potter?”

This time Potter summons the cups of water, hands one to Draco, keeping the other for himself.

“You didn’t have any nightmares last night.”

“No,” Draco breathes as his heart rate begins to settle, “not for a few years now.”

“I remind you of the war.”

It’s not a question. Draco knows that the polite thing to do is to reassure Potter, but he can’t quite bring himself to do much of anything right now, except shrug a shoulder as he tries to calm his ragged breathing.

“Yeah,” Potter says, sitting down on the edge of Draco’s bed. “I keep thinking… I keep thinking, tomorrow, I’ll wake up and it will be just a blur. A thing that I once did. An atrocity I participated in, but hardly remember. Instead it’s…” he trails off.

“Do good guys even have nightmares?”

“Good guys still do horrible things, Malfoy. ‘He had it coming’ doesn’t make me any less of a murderer.”

“Voldemort?”

“No. Everyone else.”

Draco nods, though he doesn’t know why he’s nodding. Then he frowns.

“You’re not talking about the war, you’re talking about the—”

“Cleanup. Yes. Killed far more men once I had won, than while I was fighting. Funny. We thought we were so much better, but really we were doing the same thing. Craving entire families out of existence.”

“You stopped. Eventually.”

“Now we have, yeah, but those first months. The Parkinson’s--”

“Stop.”

“Yeah. Sorry..” Then, after a long, quiet moment, “I am sorry, you know.”

Draco doesn’t respond. Can’t. Losing Pansy had been… Draco thinks sometimes that he payed for his life with those of his friends. That the ministry, being unable to wipe out the Malfoys, had decided to take everyone else in compensation: the Parkinsons, the Notts, the Zabinis; that one was particularly horrific, burned alive in their own manor, the fire so strong Blaise’s body had never even been recovered. Nothing to morn over, nothing to burry.

Draco forces the memories down. He can’t. He won’t let himself get dragged into despair. He knows well what lies that way: depression, addiction, suicide. Always, at the end of each road, suicide. And he doesn’t want that. Has promised himself that he won’t do what they had all wanted him to do. Promised himself that he would live until he was old and gray, just to spite them. Just to show that they hadn’t managed to break all of them. That someone was still standing. Even if that someone was Draco, alone on a battlefield.

“People aren’t angry anymore,” he says, as much to remind himself, as to have something to say. “People aren’t angry about the war anymore. Not really.”

“No,” says Potter, “but they’re also not sorry. Did you see what they did to that pack of werewolves out in Salisbury?”

“No, I don’t read the papers.” If Potter is surprised by the revelation, he doesn’t show it.

“Executed.”

“If they—”

“They were all on Wolfsbane. Every single one. Kids mostly, barely out of their teens.”

“People are afraid.”

“People are blind.”

“I suppose they are.”

They stay that way until dawn. Eventually, when morning light starts graying the bedroom, Draco falls asleep.

When he wakes, Potter is gone.


End file.
